John Newcombe Serve, Comments please

[gzhpcu]

Here is a clip of the Newcombe serve.

He was one of the heaviest servers of his era. Interesting is how his racket arm goes up faster than his tossing arm. The tossing arm is practically lagging, as opposed to the racket arm. Low toss, lots of body lean into the court. Seems a bit similar to Nastase IMHO.

Any other comments?

[stotty]

It was a great serve Newcombe's. He has a long classic swing and it looks like the he strikes the ball around the apex. I guess the racket arm has to get slightly ahead of itself to do that being as his swing is quite long. The thing for me is that it all comes together by the time the racket enters the drop. I have seen other players get into a mess by doing a similar thing to Newk.

I love how fast he gets into the net in the first clip. You get the split step and then the move in to execute the volley. He actually runs through that volley as he plays it, something McEnroe was quite brilliant at.

Another unusual thing about Newk's serve is elbow is quite high.

[tennis_chiro]

Newc was famous for the quality of his second serve: consistency and depth. When you look at his serve, it seems his backswing is well ahead of his toss as you have noted, but you have to view it in terms of the position of his shoulders. He had a rather unusual backswing in that his shoulders were almost dipped downward as he completed the backswing, but he does get to where the shoulders are tipped upward before he strikes up at the ball, if only briefly before that movement. When you look at the motion in terms of the line of the left shoulder to right elbow, his backswing is not really that far ahead of the toss. He did contact the ball very close to the apex and he was off to the races after that getting to the net.

don

[gzhpcu]

Looking again, The shoulders do not seem tilted at the trophy position. Low toss , fast motion.

[stotty]

For another view go to 3:44 on this clip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-hIaUiA5Qo

His serve changed a little over his career. The elbow became higher for some reason. I think the serve at 3:44 better highlights Phil's point about the racket arm getting ahead of the tossing arm.

[gzhpcu]

Look at his clip, he has no shoulder tilt. I think itnis because he tosses the ball so far into court.

[stotty]

His serve did morph around a little over time...as it does with many players. Remember, McEnroe wasn't nearly so sidesaddle in the early part of his career.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlcVqEn3v2s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4jQXklWN1A